A Lambeth councillor has vowed to continue to represent his constituents following a controversial email sting operation that resulted in his suspension from the Labour party and his recent failure to overturn the decision on appeal.
Kingsley Abrams, a veteran Labour councillor in the South London borough, was first accused of …

I don't recall the last one to do the decent thing

From the look of it

he's the victim here. The ones you allude to are the ones trying to force him out. Leaking to a well-known and respected sometime Labour minister, i.e. a colleague can only be seriously wrong in a Stalinesque party, surely.

I would tend to agree with you, but...

...reading this story it sounds more like the people who should be shot with a bag of ordure are the Lambeth NuLabour Stasi-wannabes who think that sending bogus emails in order to see if someone is leaking stuff to the press is in any way a proper or appropriate way to go about things. When the person that they're trying to entrap then forwards the offending item to the local Labour MP (which seems like a fairly reasonable action), they have the out-and-out gall to drag them up in front of some kind of Labour Party kangaroo court.

Seems to me that there's a whole bunch of folks down there in Lambeth (and in the Labour Party machine generally) who should be banned for life from holding any kind of public office and told to stop acting like petty dictatorial arse-biscuits. I'm not convinced that Mr Abrams is one of them - even if he has previously leaked stuff to the press as alleged. (Given that he was voted in with an increased majority at the local elections, presumably the local population felt that he was doing his job OK even if - or, perhaps, because - he wasn't toeing the dogmatic NuLabour line?)

Local politics and local councils, just as sleazy and corrupt as the national version, but with even less competence (if possible).

Questionable?

Questionable? Not really. Councillors are well aware that certain material is confidential and should not be circulated.. it doesn't mean that they don't do it though, and often the release of this confidential information could be defended as being in the public interest.

Councillors are not exempt from RIPA, so if the council has an appropriate policy and procedures then a councillor's email can be intercepted without notice.

And it's not a political issue either, if the councillor was breaching confidentiality then it is a disciplinary one. There is a quite separate issue between Cllr Abrams and his local party.

But.. only someone really stupid would leak sensitive information using the council's email system anyway. However, a number of councillors are busted each year for looking at porn on their council laptops which is even more stupid.

It does seem to be all rather harsh on Cllr Abrams, but assuming that El Reg is 100% accurate in the facts then it is likely that the council has acted within its authority, internal Labour party squabbling is up to them.

WTF

What did he do wrong? They thought he was leaking to the press and found he was not doing that - all he did was forward to a Labour MP.... Err they are part of the same party so why should he not do that!

Bizarre - especially the AC comment that he should step down and Labour ppl do not do the right thing. Do people just read the allegations when it comes to politicians and completely bypass their brains to assume guilt?

it's not as though he bought a parliamentary seat

Deviants Who Betray The Proletariat

Feliks Dzerzhinsky would be proud of the modern-day British Labour Party

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Dzerzhinsky

You know, the Worker's Paradise must be established at the cost of eliminating those who are blind to the benefits of this utopia.

Communists all around the world are the same - totalitarian bastards addicted to all sorts of nasty methods to get rid of those who could pose a problem. In this case the "suspect" was acting 100% legal - he informed a member of the British government (the labour MP) about some political news- but he was suspended of the Labour Party for doing that. One of the exemplary cases of the Ulgy Face Of Collectivism.